Two Decades Later, the Angel Warriors Continue to Fall: Walter Dean Myers's Sunrise over Fallujah
Jennifer M. Brown, Curriculum Connections -- School Library Journal, 5/15/2008
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In 1988, Walter Dean Myers wrote Fallen Angels (Scholastic), a novel narrated by Richie Perry, just out of high school and off to Vietnam. Myers, like Perry, was very young when he went to Vietnam, and he lost a brother there. Twenty years later, Myers returns to the battlefield with Sunrise over Fallujah (Scholastic, 2008), a story set during the current Iraq War. This novel, also narrated by a newly graduated high school senior, unfolds through the eyes of Robin “Birdy” Perry, nephew to Fallen Angels's Richie. Here Myers talks about what he learned as a young man in Vietnam, what he has learned about war as a more seasoned man, and what we as a nation still have to learn.
Why did you create a blood connection between the narrators of your two novels?
I think it was my own disappointment that we’re still fighting wars. When I was 17, I was going into the army, at the beginning of a war that was then controversial, and still is; my son was in the Middle East; my grandson was in the Middle East. We haven’t learned anything….There was a time when we thought the threat of nuclear war would stop all wars. I don’t believe that now.
With both narrators, you maintain an air of innocence, or perhaps hope, about them. Why?
I wanted [Birdy] to discover the layers. In the Army everyone takes infantry training and learns how to use weapons and how to defend himself. Then you go “in country” and you begin to see, okay this is complex There are [international laws governing engagement]... It’s supposed to be precise, but it isn’t. What do you say to yourself [when you’ve just killed someone?] How does a young person handle that psychologically?
Positioning Birdy within the Civil Affairs group was inspired.
Something I hope to accomplish with the book is getting young people to think [beyond], “Oh, these are bad people, these are terrorists.” When a young person goes into the army, they try to make it even simpler: [in Vietnam,] they called people “gooks” and “slants”; in Iraq they call them “ragheads” and “sand niggers.” To a large extent that’s so you can get people to go out and kill.
One of the things that struck me as I followed the After Action reports from some of the Civil Affairs units was that many of the units realized the needs of the local people. The soldiers couldn’t get them the things they needed through regular military channels. They’d [write in letters or emails home], we wish we had more toothpaste or books. On the one hand, soldiers are shooting and killing people, and on the other hand, churches are sending everyday supplies to them [for the Iraqi villagers].
In both books, the narrators are told the war is “just about over.” Why?
In Iraq, there was “Shock and Awe.”…The Iraqi army, as expected, laid down their arms. That part of the war was over. Mission accomplished; relatively minor loss of life from the American point of view, and not that much from the Iraqi point of view. [But] war isn’t like that. War doesn’t happen that way. There’s a price to pay and we’re still paying that price.
In this war, as opposed to even the first Gulf war, there are different rules of reporting. [Reporters] are not allowed to show coffins or wounded people....How are young people going to understand any of this? What are they seeing?...And how are they going to make decisions about who to vote for in November when people aren’t giving them the whole picture? When they’re told 4000 people were killed in Iraq? But 20,000 more have core injuries—to the brain, to the spinal column, loss of limbs—injuries that will affect the life of the soldier forever. We’ll be living with the affects of this war well into 2050.
In both Falling Angels and Sunrise over Fallujah, when an officer dies, the commanding officer says a prayer for the “angel warriors.” Is there any significance to that prayer for you?
When I was doing research for Monster (HarperCollins, 1999), I went to prisons. One thing that struck me was that none of the prisoners were born bad. They were all born good; they were born with an aura of innocence. They were, in effect, angels to me. Something happened along the way that damaged them.
With our soldiers, the thing that really gets to me is that they are kids who are 18, 19, and 20 years old—kids who are in high school, playing high school ball, and looking for first dates—and we turn them into soldiers. America has the youngest combat soldiers of all the major countries with organized armies. In many countries, you can’t enter combat until you’re 19 or 20. In America you can enter combat at 17. They’re children, just precious young people that we’re losing. Even up to 25 and 30 years old, they’re still, to me, civilians who’ve been turned into people who can kill, will kill, and who in turn will be killed. Human beings are meant for better than that.
